Saab accused of cloaking – Media Culpa is not convinced

Saab is accused of manipulating search engine results via cloaking, a technique which generates one page for search engine’s web crawlers and another page for visitors, with the purpose of increasing search engine ranking. This practice may lead a page to become penalized in search engines. There are also of course legitimate reasons for showing one page for crawlers and one for visitors.

Wil Reynolds, an internet marketing consultant, made the allegations in a speech at a marketing conference in Las Vegas last week, according to BrandWeek. What made Reynolds react was that Saab was ranked in the top ten in Google for “luxury car”. Saab denies any illicit behaviour.

By checking Saab’s site with Webcab.de we can find this textual information, see below. I cannot see how this can be described as cloaking, but I’m no expert on the subject.